Focusing on The Family

[Joanne98]

Journalist Jeff Sharlet went undercover to infiltrate a secretive religious organization in Washington known as The Family. Sarah Posner asks him what they want, and how they go about getting it.

Sarah Posner | July 10, 2008

Jeff Sharlet's new book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, is one of the most important accounts of the intersection of fundamentalist religion and politics in recent memory. The Family exposes the inner workings of an elite and secretive association of politicos (The Family boasts a bipartisan but mostly Republican roster of members, including Sens. Sam Brownback, a Kansas Republican, and Mark Pryer, an Arkansas Democrat) and business executives (such as the CEOs of Continental Oil and the defense contractor Raytheon) who have exploited their uber-masculine, uber-capitalist version of Christianity to serve political and profit-making goals, from union-busting here at home to imperialist adventures abroad.

The Family is best known to the public for its annual National Prayer Breakfast, a seemingly innocuous event routinely attended by presidents and members of Congress. But as Sharlet shows, The Family's real influence is exerted through a system of prayer groups that provide this elite group of religious fundamentalists with lawmaking and deal-making opportunities long associated with the country club golf course.

Sharlet combines his experiences going undercover at The Family's Arlington, Virginia, compound, skillful interviews with insiders and allies, and exhaustive historical research to produce this riveting account that transcends the recurring question of whether the religious right is dead. Instead of measuring the power of the religious-right grass roots from one election cycle to another, Sharlet tells the most detailed story to date of how fundamentalist Christianity has driven American political power -- and most significantly, how it has fueled opposition to the New Deal, labor unions, and progressive policy in general.

I sat down with Sharlet a couple of weeks ago when he was in Washington on his book tour.

Sarah Posner: Let's start by talking about how the whole project almost came about by accident when the brother of your ex-girlfriend invited you to come to a place called Ivanwald.

Jeff Sharlet: This friend said, "Can you meet with my brother? I'm afraid he's joined a cult; you write about religion and should check it out."

SP: Did he tell you that it was a seat of political power in Washington? Or did he just make it seem like it was an overgrown frat?

JS: It was an overgrown frat with all of these interesting political connections that he denied had any politics, any organization, anything. A group of men loving leaders. The whole thing is predicated on this idea that politicians are somehow the most vulnerable among us. And that they need special care, because they're so busy serving us, who's serving them?

SP: Only men, right?

JS: Women can be involved; I never met one, but I knew they were there. There was a house down the road for women who were being groomed for helpmates to leadership. These were wealthy young women who had grown up on ranches in Texas who were being made to put on skirts and lipstick and curtsy to Ed Meese.

SP: And this is in Arlington, right across the Potomac from Georgetown.

JS: Yes. Big old beautiful mansion where they host -- Ed Meese, for instance, continues to host a weekly meeting there; he'll invite a gathering of diplomats, a few businessmen, and a few politicians. They talk about how we can do conflict resolution, a couple of brothers in Christ can just get together and share their love for one another. If they're "top men." If they're chosen by God for this, if they're elites, if they're chosen by God according to Romans 13.

SP: Give me an example.

JS: The Family did negotiate some years back a peace deal between Paul Kagame and Joseph Kabila in Congo. And it was a terrible peace deal, and it went nowhere, and that war goes on and on because you had these top American politicians exerting their sentimental notions of religion that at the same time tend to line up with American political interests and American economic interests.

SP: What are those sentimental notions of religion?

JS: Are you willing to submit to this Christ, are you willing to say that you're obeying Christ before you obey the will of the people, what The Family calls "the din of the vox popula." They don't like that.

SP: So you're listening to this imaginary Christ instead of representing your constituents, because the will of the people is just the riff-raff?

JS: It's actually a little worse than that. What you're doing is getting a collection of elites who are submitting to the authority of an American-led fundamentalist network, not following their conscience but following Christ as he reveals himself secretly to the elite.

SP: So their Christ is not the social gospel Christ of the mainline denominations, and it's also not the Christ that evangelicals have their personal walk with either, because that Christ is a lot more egalitarian, and the social gospel Christ is more focused on justice issues.

JS: Right.

SP: So who invented this Christ that these guys connect with?

JS: It was invented in 1945, in direct response to the social gospel Christ, by Abraham Vereide . He was a Norwegian immigrant to America, and had risen pretty high in social gospel circles, working with Goodwill. He had come to the conclusion that this was going nowhere, because of the Great Depression, which in his mind was clearly a punishment from God, for disobedience. The greatest form of disobedience was labor organizations.

SP: So God was going to punish America for labor unions?

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=focusing_on_the_family

[DCKit]

1. An evil gay cult? Republicans, men only, private and controlled access, fabulous house....

and "beards" on tap, but at a convenient distance from the center of "power". No wonder they're always projecting "Teh Gay Agenda" - they're IT.

The potential for blackmail and control is infinite with a setup like this.